Spirituality Group

Spirituality Group – a Chance to Learn and Share!The Spirituality Group meets approximately monthly and our goal is to open ourselves to discovering new ways of understanding and interacting with the Holy Spirit in its many forms. Over the past few months, we’ve been really enjoying exploring some of the chapters of the book entitled: “Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us” by Adele Ahlberg Calhoun. The book is organised thematically, and each individual chapter treats with a particular topic of interest that has bearing on our lives. For example, over the past few months, the topics we have looked at include: “Hospitality”, “Truth-telling”, “Celebration”, and “Self-Care”. In each case, there is biblical scripture associated with the topic, some text by the author reflecting on the nature of the idea (based on her own experiences as a Christian operating in the modern world), and then there are a series of questions offered for reflection. At our meetings, we light a candle, centre ourselves to the present moment, then read the text and go gently through the questions, discussing the ideas from our own perspectives and experiences.So far, I have found our meetings extremely life-giving in many ways. Sometimes the topic ends up being tied serendipitously with something highly relevant that we had not really anticipated. For example, the topic of “Hospitality” landed in the same week as the Rugby World Cup final, when virtually the whole country shared a sense of welcoming the world to our shores!Another aspect of our Spirituality Group meetings is to look at the “Course in Miracles”, which is available as a book and also on-line. This is a course which lasts for 365 days, and entails reading and communing with just a short slice of spiritually-focused text on each day. I have been doing this course, but rather slowly, as I sometimes miss a day or two. This doesn’t matter, however, and one can always just do each day, in sequence, as and when one is ready to do it. For me, this has meant that the 365 days will be spread over quite a lot more than one year, but that’s ok! Today I got up to number 249! It has been a revelation to experience this course alongside our weekly worship services at St Andrews. I honestly don’t know how God does it, but the dynamic combination of these two things working together, at least within my heart and I confess that being involved in this Course in Miracles and the Spirituality Group has really transformed my life, and all in an extremely positive way. As a consequence of these activities, I have now developed my own meditative devotional time, including scripture readings that I feel drawn to, which I do just alongside breakfast each morning, and which I truly cherish. It has been exciting to feel God working on the inside, and it seems that there are no bounds to the creativity and generosity of the Holy Spirit, through a variety of paths, in addition to our enjoyable weekly worship services at St Andrews – all one has to do is start listening and it soon encompasses all aspects of life in a new kind of love, truth and joy! Needless to say, I am very grateful to Stephen for starting up this group!Stephen and I warmly invite you to join us for Spirituality Group!Blessings,MartiVIEW OUR ARCHIVES FOR BACK ISSUES OF THE PARISH NEWSLETTER

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